Saturday, April 16, 2005

by Misha Cohen

12:51 AM

Did you know that up to 300,000 Iraqis peacefully protested the US occupation, last Saturday, on the anniversary of our invasion of Baghdad? Apparently the world's media didn't either. The Los Angeles Times reported this 300,000 statistic. Most other news sources reported the number as "tens of thousands." I searched for a couple of hours and only found two pictures of the event. I have no idea how all the media in the world could not estimate the number of Iraqi protesters chanting "Death to America" to at least the nearest ten thousand. It was a well planned protest and Moqtada al Sadr, the radical Shi'ite cleric who organized it, advertised it a week in advance. These were not Sunni Muslims. They were Shi'ite Muslims. 5,000 Sunni Muslims did protest, in the city of Ramadi.

If we want to win this war hadn't we better know exactly what we're up against? Shouldn't we be honest with ourselves about what's happening? We have not yet won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, or a good chunk of them, and ignoring it won't help.

It is very disturbing that we managed to not have a single video camera or numerous film cameras (with numerous photo galleries) documenting the happenings in Iraq. I can't believe it's simply bandwidth that is limiting our coverage of world events. On the same weekend, Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles in a clamshell dress, and the Pope died. All the cameras must have been covering these events.

Meanwhile, the American people still believe what we're told: the Iraqis love us, and the war is going fine.